Just off Geldard Road in Gildersome there are two council run travellers estates with 20 plots each which seem to have been there many years. Now looking on Leodis there are some old pics from 1964 showing some terraced houses located on Cottingley Springs which i'm "presuming" is the same site where these camps are now. I know there are two farms that run off each of these estates Wood Farm and Spring End Farm and I have heard some stories that originally the Travellers site was located half way up spring end farm before being relocated further down towards the Main Road which is where they are now. So was this originally an estate of terraced houses called Cottingley Springs, were there many houses on there if so and when were they demolished?

There are more pictures on there if you search on "Cottingley Springs."

I think the present location of the travellers' sites is because they are on what used to be the Leeds City boundary when the first was established.

I'm fairly sure that the second site was established outside what had been the Leeds boundary, and that the land was already in public ownership because part of it had been a sewage treatment works long ago for Gildersome.

The site contained iron and/or coal mines/workings which supplied raw materials to the Farnley Ironworks furnace bank. A mineral rail/tramway connected the area with the furnaces, with two terminal branches to the Cottingley Springs area, and with a further branch to the south some way westwards. All are to be found on OS maps of the area up until the 1930s. It is likely that the terrace was connected with this provision.